Spending as much time as I do talking about the benefits of cloud computing, it’s sometimes a little frustrating living somewhere that is generally the last place in the world to have access to technological innovations. Case in point is the aforementioned cloud computing – while we can obviously make use of offshore cloud solutions, I’ve been saying for years that we really need some local cloud providers – not only as an answer to the eternal concerns around privacy and legal jurisdiction in the case of offshore data.

So a couple of news events this week brought a smile to my face. Firstly came Amazon refusing to confirm (but pointedly not denying) that they would be providing a local zone for what is the best known IaaS provider to date. Reports have suggested that AWS will unveil an Australian-based data center early next year and that it would be co-located with an existing provider (Equinix looks likely).

This is a super-exciting development as AWS is undeniably the granddaddy of IaaS and a geographical broadening like this is a validation – both of Australasia as a market, but also of he need for geographic granularity over data (something I’ve been saying for years).

The second development is smaller in scale, but no less exciting. CloudCentral, an Australian based IaaS provider that has had a single zone offering for around a year, is announcing a second availability zone, this time in Sydney. Like AWS, CloudCentral have decided to co-locate their servers in a third party facility (again, as per the rumors for AWS, choosing Equinix as the location).

For CloudCentral the reasoning is obvious – they’re enabling customers who want high availability across multiple locations to achieve that all from one provider – it’s an absolute no-brainer and goes long way to showing CloudCentral as a credible “one stop shop” offering. Quick to make commercial benefit from the move, specially before any of the big players enter the market, CloudCentral CEO Kristoffer Sheather pointed out that;

the new cloud computing location differentiates CloudCentral from its competitors, especially those without an Australian data centre presence

Sheather doesn’t stop there though, he goes further on the offensive saying that;

CloudCentral will be the only provider of true pay-as-you-grow, on-demand cloud infrastructure services from multiple Australian eastern seaboard data centres that are on the AGIMO data centre panel with a guarantee that all data will be retained within Australia

It’s a direct allusion to Government department’s and corporate’s concerns round location of data – taking advantage of what is likely to be a short term point of difference makes sense for a small provider like CloudCentral that has only a limited window of opportunity to grow before larger, and better funded, competitors come to market.

Either way – both of these announcements re great news for organizations based in Australasia… now all I need to do is progress that New Zealand data center project that some of us have been working on. Hmmmm….